At Grover Norquist’s weekly conservative confab this Wednesday, the topic was how the GOP can get its groove back in the next two years. You gotta hand it to the K Street Project mastermind. Dude is cocky:
Despite short-term setbacks, Norquist said, the conservative movement is “perfectly healthy. No one is losing because they favor tax cuts, are pro-life, pro-gun or pro-growth.
“In two years, there is no George W. Bush and almost no Iraq war as presently constructed,” Norquist said.
“And Democrats will be standing there, naked to the winds, having been forced by Nancy Pelosi to vote for tax increases, gun control and impeaching the president,” he added, referring to the future speaker of the House.
Visions of disrobed Democrats aside, note how Norquist’s smugness actually reveals his eagerness to get beyond Iraq and George W. Bush (echoing the neocons’ new favorite theme). Yet somehow I suspect Republicans are going to have to confront those two issues in 2008 before they can get back to the business of being “real” conservatives. If only the Bush legacy could be drowned in the bath tub before then!
